Page 54 of Up from the Earth

Something whizzed through the air, and I pulled my head up just in time to dodge a blow from Father Paine’s robe.Wait, what?Shaking myself, I righted my vision. Had I really seen that? But sure enough, the long length of stained priestly garb slinked back to the man like a snake under his command. It was fiercely pointed at one end, a dagger formed from fabric and dried blood.

“You really should have stayed away, witch. Though, I know I’m going to love killing you again even more than the first time. My, my, how delicious your magic will taste, hmm? And you know, thanks to this dumb, little stunt of yours, I’ll be able to open this tear fully. Your energy is just what I need.”

My stomach dropped as my chest squeezed. I couldn’t fail. I couldn’t allow my true end to be what plummeted the World of Below into the gnawing Pit, lorded over by some fucking priest who liked to rape children, murdering in the name of his God and his pleasure.

Hauling myself up off the ground, I brushed off the debris that clung to me. A long scrape covered the top of my arm, the skin now exposed in random places and a mean red. Pain hummed through me from leaping to the ground, from colliding with the priest’s false throne, but I would not give it my thoughts.

“You will end here, Paine. This realm does not belong to you. And furthermore,” I threw my arms toward the ground, extending the vines that would wrap around this villain’s neck and choke the life from the weed, “you touched my fucking King.”

I walked forward, pulling power from the core of the earth with each step, silently calling my spirits to rise from beneath and keep him from drawing energy from the tear. Glowing green creatures—fallen brethren of the forest, children stolen from their parents’ embrace, souls taken from their resting place and used to feed this monster—rose from the cracks in the pummeled crust.

“And I’m going to tear you to pieces myself,human.”

The arrogant didn’t feel fear, so Father Paine threw his head back and laughed. But I strode forward, and the woods’ warriors surged up, creating a wall between the priest and his precious powersource.

In a burst of movement, the priest took to the sky, the shockwave forcing me to recoil and shield my eyes from the dagger-sharp pieces of shale and volcanic rock. Glaring up, I reached forward. The earth here was not of the mortal realm, but I was a child of two homes—Darkness and Light, Spring and Winter, The World Above and The World Below.

Pillars of stone erupted from the ground, sporadic but purposeful placements that created a path that rose into the air after the priest. I sprinted up them, leaping from platform to platform as I conjured them from beneath me.

“No! You stupid bitch!” Father Paine’s garbled voice boomed, shaking the clouds, and he hurled his shredded blades of cloth through the air. “Fucking die!”

Vines launched from the pillars, from my arms, and I parried the incoming blows. I was closing the distance. I was nearly to him. I just needed to sink my tendrils into him once more.

“I have died before, false king.” I launched a vine through the air, where it maneuvered through the swirling array of fabric and sliced across the gray flesh of his cheek. “But you cannot kill what can rise up from the earth.”

“Then I will murder the earth itself!”

Father Paine raised his arms into the sky and as he pulled them back down, the thin rails of his bones shaking beneath skin pulled too tight, gargantuan spheres of rock and fire hurtled from the black clouded sky. Too many of them, their size enough to cover this entire area near the gate, rained down, pulled from the depths of the Pit and birthed through the atmosphere to sunder the whole of this realm.

The King.I shot my gaze to where they remained chained to that horrid fucking throne.No!

With everything I had, I forced innumerable vines, branches, and roots from the ground, arching over the scene below as a shroud of protection. The burning rocks crashed into them, and pain and hatred lanced through their woven lattice work into my core.

I would not let them fail, let them char up and die. The spirits I’d risen to fight with me would be destroyed, these meteors of the Pit not the cosmos. My King would be destroyed, and so I screamed until blood tore from my lungs, coating my teeth as it was flung from me onto the stone. I would take the force of all this chaotic annihilation. I would claim it all and hold it within my bones before I saw my family annihilated by this wielder of unnatural desolation.

The booming impacts thundered down, one after the other after the other, until there was silence. My being ached, and the threads of gold running through space and time were now visible to me as I approached that unyielding abyss once more.

And he was there.

“It may have saved them.” Claws wove through my hair, yanking my head up as they burrowed into my mind. “But it did nothing to save you or this fucking useless plane.”

Excruciation, crystal clear and vibrant behind my eyes, was everything. It was all I knew or felt, this reaching, twisting pull of all my thoughts through the serrated edges of Father Paine’s nails. Each pluck of the invisible strands of my mind reverberated through my soul, ripples of agony pulled forward and forefront.

The scrapes earned in the forest as a child. The losses felt both young and old. The broken bones and deathly pressure of my blood pressure dropping, my heart stopping.

It was all there, killing me again.

“Life and death are delivery means for the void, for victories gained in murder and torment. There is no purpose beyond the claiming of power and consumption of those beneath you.”

Warmth dripped from my nose, my eyes and ears. Fever boiled my brain as my body shook, and I could do nothing but experience my death a second time, the slow-motion progression severing the golden thread of my existence from reality.

“You think your fucking king matters? You think you matter?” Fingers roamed through my skull, my pillars of stone dropping from the sky as I lost the ability to wield them. “Power. Power is all that matters, and I will have all of it, from every last being in the entire goddamn universe.”

A blow landed across my cheek, knocking my face to the side. The skin above my eye tore, leaking blood down my face.

“Your king.” Another. “Your son.” Another. “You. I will see it all ground up like chum in my belly. The Pit will have its rule, and I will be its shepherd and master.”

Memories I’d locked away rushed to the surface. The tears on my mother’s face as she told me of my father’s death, killed by…witch hunters. Not a car crash. Betty was taken from us all, killed by one we trusted—Cerberus’s blood leaking onto my legs.

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